As generally known in the art, recent development of ultra-high speed network technology and various technologies for compressing video data has created rapidly developing animation service technology using wired/wireless networks. Particularly, animation service technology has played a pivotal role of accelerating communication on the World Wide Web.
Conventional animation services have been provided mainly via TVs by existing public broadcasting media or cabled broadcast providers. However, it has recently become possible for any person having technology/ability to produce/provide animations to service his/her own animations via wired/wireless networks (e.g. Internet) at any time.
As a result, a large number of dedicated Internet broadcasting stations and mobile image service providers have appeared, who provide professional contents in various fields. They have grown a new type of media, the influence of which is comparable to that of existing media and broadcasting stations.
With the aid of recent technology, even laymen with no ability to produce/provide animations can now produce/provide their own animations, i.e. UCC (User Created Contents). This UCC technology is one of the sensational technologies of the Web 2.0 era, and obtains much interest worldwidely. The technology is regarded as having advanced the conventional animation service technology based on wired/wireless networks one step further.
In order to provide animations via networks, one must generally have equipment such as a web server and a streaming server. Therefore, up to now animation service providers having this type of equipment have solely produced animations and uploaded them to servers online so that service subscribers can use them. In other words, laymen without such equipment can hardly produce their own animations and provide them via the web. However, the situation has been changed by the appearance of UCC. As a result, the center of animation services is shifting from service providers to service users or participants. There also appeared a service supporting UCC not only in the web environments, but also in mobile network environments based on cellular phones.
A conventional network-based animation service requires steps of producing and providing animations as shown in FIG. 1, particularly steps of photography, capturing, editing, encoding, uploading, and streaming. However, laymen without professional skills regarding animations cannot easily follow these steps.
FIG. 1 briefly shows conventional technology for producing and providing animations.
The conventional method for producing and providing animations includes the steps of obtaining source images by photography equipment or providing existing image sources, capturing the obtained images or image sources into digital images by using computers, image editing cards, peripheral devices, related image editing programs, etc., and editing and encoding the captured images. The encoded animations are uploaded to the network server and provided to users by streaming equipment.
The conventional technology has a problem in that laymen without skills to handle video equipment or programs cannot easily produce and provide animations. Even in the case of UCC technology, users cannot use it unless they have their own image sources or unless they have the ability to produce animations.
The conventional technology also has a problem in that, once encoded, animations cannot be modified. Particularly, in order to modify an animation that has been encoded, one needs the master source of the animation, which has not been encoded. The master source must be opened by the same image editing program that had originally been used. Then, the master source is modified, edited, and encoded into a new animation. This means that modification of a produced animation requires the corresponding video equipment, image editing program, and image editing technique.
In order to provide encoded animations via wired/wireless networks (e.g. Internet), one must construct his/her own system, such as a web server or a streaming server, and upload animations to it. However, it is unthinkable for an individual to construct such a system. Therefore, individuals need subscription to a site having such a system and use services provided by it. Individuals must also install a specific program provided by the site or a component (e.g. ActiveX) on their PCs to upload animations to the site. Some of the services provided by the site even require payment.
Once an animation has been uploaded on the site in this manner, it cannot be modified any more. This is because, once a user has uploaded an animation to the site, it has no connection to his/her own PC, and the site provides no means to remotely edit the animation via wired/wireless networks. Therefore, if a user wants to modify his/her animation that has been uploaded to a site supporting an animation service according to the prior art, he/she must delete the uploaded animation, retrieve the master source from his/her PC, modify/edit it, newly encode it, and upload it again.
Therefore, it is needed to provide solutions for enabling any person to easily produce animations and upload them to networks to provide animation services. The technology is also expected to enable users to easily edit and modify produced animations; easily select favorite animations and modify and use them as desired; and distribute produced animations to a number of customers so that they can modify the animations by themselves.